


Not Just A River In Egypt

by LananiA3O



Series: Batman: Arkham Compendium [10]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: Arkham (Video Games)
Genre: Gen, Moral Dilemmas, Spoilers, post-arkham knight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-11-25
Packaged: 2018-09-02 01:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8645116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LananiA3O/pseuds/LananiA3O
Summary: Jim Gordon has spent enough time around Gotham's vigilantes to have figured out their identities, even if he has no solid proof. Technically, he should arrest them all. Practically, Jim finds the lines between what is just and what is right to be increasingly blurry. The fact that one of them is part of both his family and their family does not make it any easier.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, the basic idea for this story has been floating around my head for a long time now, but I never had any specific direction to go in. Cue my muse kicking in, in the middle of a work day, eleven days into a crunch time / overtime stretch no less. Needless to say, this thing is very poorly proof-read. I apologize.
> 
> On the bright side... happy Thanksgiving and many thanks to every one of my readers and commenters. You are all wonderful people :)

“I don’t know who he is.”

That’s what James W. Gordon usually told people when they asked him about the black-clad vigilante who so often helped him on his worst cases, on the worst nights. Nights like this. Nights made of fear and violence.

Technically, he was not clad in black, because contrary to what most people believed, true black would actually make a person stand out instead of disappear, too dark for a city illuminated so brightly. Technically, it was various shades of dark grey. Technically, Jim Gordon did not know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who Batman was. He had no hard evidence on the matter. And technically, what James Gordon did or did not know no longer mattered, because now everybody and their mother knew. Scarecrow’s broadcast had been kind of hard to miss. The cat’s out of the bag, or maybe the bat’s out of the cave or something like that. Either way, Gordon could safely say that he had never found out who Batman was.

But the truth is the Nile is not just a river in Egypt.

In hindsight, good old fashioned logic and a little bit of luck had solved the mystery for him years ago. After all, Dick Grayson had become a regular guest at the apartment Jim and his daughter had shared, for as long as Barbara had been dating him, and while domino masks were great at hiding your identity from strangers, they worked decidedly less well in front of people that knew your real face. He would have recognized that everlasting-sunshine Grayson grin anywhere.

Robin was Dick Grayson. And since nobody ever asked him about Robin and since Barbara was dating him, he had decided to keep his mouth shut and ignore the big, purple elephant in the room. He had always thought that Barbara would be shocked if she ever found out, that it would break her heart discovering that her boyfriend was putting his life on the line every night, grappling from rooftop to rooftop and fighting bad guys with knives and guns.

Boy, had he been wrong about that one.

Either way, Dick Grayson was Robin. Dick Grayson moved to Blüdhaven. Robin disappeared. Nightwing appeared, and while BPD and GCPD may not have been best friends, there was enough communication between the two to bring the news to the GCPD water cooler before the end of the week. Dick Grayson had also been adopted by the insanely rich playboy-billionaire Bruce Wayne. Why would a man like that adopt a fifteen-year-old kid from a travelling circus? Jim blamed it on the nature of his job, not to mention the nature of this damn city, that his first thoughts on that had been anything but rosy.

Apparently, the sentiment had been shared by Bruce Wayne’s second son, his ‘project from the projects’ as the papers had labeled him. Jason Todd. Unfortunately, Jason had been no stranger to Jim, even before he started digging. The kid had had a reputation at GCPD at an age no child should ever even have set foot into a police station. Small-time juvenile delinquent, if you asked the files, violent, loud-mouthed, pain in the ass, escape-Houdini bastard if you asked the officers. Jim remembered the night he had driven to the orphanage, heeding a call about a violent assault of some crazy teenagers on some wardens. As it turned out, it had been only one crazy teenager on all the wardens and the teen was winning. When Batman had arrived, talked Jason down and then told Gordon to let him go, Jim had nearly swallowed his pipe. Harsh words had been said. Debts had been called in and before he knew, Batman had driven off with the kid. No one in that equation had looked like they were happy with the result.

A couple of days later, the first reporters had caught wind of the latest inhabitant of Wayne Manor. By next February, the adoption had been finalized. A little later, all evidence pertaining to Jason Peter Todd had mysteriously disappeared from the GCPD. And Robin… Robin had re-appeared on the rooftops, tailing Batman, looking like a hopeful speck of color in a city of gritty ashes. Blue eyes. Black hair. Same costume. But that couldn’t fool a seasoned detective. Dick’s smile had been a wide, toothy grin. Jason’s had been a slasher smile fit for most of the guys in lockup. Dick had followed Batman’s every step, staying close to him, looking to him for directions. Jason had stayed at arm’s length, looking at Batman like he wasn’t quite trusting this entire gig. It was the same look he shot Jim every time he came home to find Jason and Barbara studying together on the couch. It was the same look he shot the reporters who feigned interest. Jason Todd trusted no one and for Robin, that was probably a good survival skill.

Then one day, Jason Todd disappeared. Robin disappeared, too. The media had a field day hassling Bruce Wayne and his butler and his first son, asking for details. _Was there a break up? Has the social experiment failed? Did you disown him and send him packing? Has Jason gotten hooked on drugs and is he now on rehab? Has he gotten mixed up with the wrong people and ended up in jail? Is he dead?_

For once, Bruce Wayne had not charmed the media. For once, his only reply to all the reporters had been a stone-faced ‘no comment’. For the second time in his life, the first having been a long twenty-five years ago, Jim Gordon had pitied Bruce Wayne. Whatever had happened to Jason was clearly an open wound and nobody, not even the worst piece of scum on God’s green earth, deserved to be harassed about something so personal, so painful as the disappearance of one’s child. At the same time, Batman had become increasingly emotional, if that was ever a word to use in the same sentence as ‘the Batman’. He had certainly gotten angrier. More broken bones. More cuts and bruises. Having criminals scared of the Bat was nothing new. Having them beg the GCPD officers to send them straight to jail, to lock them up somewhere deep underground rather than have them within arm’s reach of Batman... that was new.

Then, a new Robin had appeared. Most people at GCPD had not noticed of course. Blue eyes. Black hair. Mostly same costume. He was Robin, alright. But this kid was different. The previous Robins had thrown themselves into their vigilante life hook, line and sinker. This kid... this kid was walking the tightrope between being Batman’s assistant and being his emotional anchor. When Jim had come home one day to have Barbara introduce him to her new boyfriend, all he had been able to do was blink at him. _You gotta be kidding me_. Never before and never again had Jim been so glad about an emergency call coming in just after he got home. It saved him from having to wonder why his daughter always ended up bringing home Robin. Well, at least it had saved him for a couple of hours, but Gotham was not the kind of city where people looked gift horses in the mouth.

The final nail in the coffin had been August 16th, 2012.

He remembered calling Batman that night, about the purple envelope they had received. The purple envelope with the sunflower yellow card inside that asked GCPD to call Batman and inform him that there was a present waiting for him atop Mercy Bridge. Batman was never late in answering a call, but the Flash himself couldn’t have shown up in Bleake any sooner that night. They had all had. Batman. Nightwing. Robin. Batgirl... How had he not noticed? How had he not seen her for what she was? In hindsight, perhaps he had noticed. Perhaps he had always know, deep down in his heart somewhere, that Batgirl was his daughter, his beautiful Barbara.

Thenile is not just a river in Egypt.

Batman had not come back from the bridge that night. Neither had Robin, nor Batgirl. The Batmobile had sped off, windshields darkened, not to be seen again until a couple of days later. The call from Batman had been short, his voice tense and eerily quiet. There was none of the guttural growling that usually scared the crooks. None of the professionally flat tone that usually comforted Jim. There was pain. Pain and grief, carefully, but not a hundred percent successfully, veiled by a mask that was crumbling with every word.

 _It was a message from the Joker. Nightwing will stay on site to gather more evidence. Tell your men to stand down_.

He had told his men to stand down, alright, but Jim Gordon had remained by the bridge, watching Nightwing, Dick Grayson, comb over that ugly piece of metal like his life depended on it. Eventually, as the first birds were starting to sing, he had climbed up the service stairs on the south side himself and made his way to the center column. The cowl and the rain had hidden the tears, and the suit had hidden the shudders, but people are more than flesh and bones. People, even at their worst, are social creatures, capable of incredibly strong emotions, and Dick Grayson was radiating misery from every pore as he handed over the scene to Gordon. Dead, plucked Robin birds nailed to cold, harsh metal. Joker’s neon purple letters and clown faces all over. An old battered TV with a VCR underneath. He knew even before he looked that the VCR would be empty. The crime scene had been tempered with, but as Nightwing quickly said goodbye and grappled off into the night, Jim knew he would never mention it to Batman or to anyone on the force.

Because people, even at their worst, are social creatures, capable of reading each others emotions.

This had not been two vigilantes investigating a case. This had been two men, who had had the floor ripped out from underneath their feet. James Gordon had been with the police for almost three decades. He knew a grieving parent, a grieving brother, when he saw one.

Two years and a half later, just after the Arkham City debacle, multi-millionaire Jack Drake and his wife had been murdered, Robin had nearly died in Harley Quinn’s insane revenge plot and Tim Drake had been adopted by Bruce Wayne. Jim Gordon had not been surprised. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until today, until Halloween 2015, that he would be surprised again.

Oh boy, had this night had it in for him.

If someone had woken him three days ago and told him that Gotham would be invaded by a freaking army and drowned in fear gas before the end of Halloween despite Batman’s best efforts, if someone had told him that his little girl, his Barbara, was really working for the Bat and that someone would kidnap her and use her as bait, he would have checked that person into the nearest madhouse. But it had happened. In hindsight, he had made the worst mistake ever: he had run off in an emotionally charged state, without back up, without communications, in pursuit of a deranged psychopath with some serious man- and firepower at his side. It had ended just about as well as was to be expected. But Barbara was alive and that was all that had mattered. If Scarecrow wanted him to set a trap for Batman, he’d do it. If Scarecrow wanted him to jump off a skyscraper without a parachute, he’d do it. There were precious few things that a parent wouldn’t do for their child. At that point, strapped to an uncomfortable chair in an abandoned mall, he had been sure that there was nothing more that could happen tonight that might shock him.

It had taken Batman all of one word: _Jason?!_

 _Jason? Jason Todd?_ He remembered looking at the young man in the camouflage suit, the man who had wrecked Gotham, brought the city to its knees, crippled the police, facilitated a major chemical attack and almost certainly personally killed at least a dozen people that night. A man who, by his own admission, wanted Batman deader than dead. Normally, any one of these would have been enough to make Batman kick his ass. Instead, Batman, Bruce, evaded his blows and shots, carefully working his way forward, pushing instead of punching, talking instead of kicking. He tried to focus through the mess that was his aching body and his already worried mind to listen to their conversation and slowly the pieces fell into place.

Robin, who had disappeared, and Batman, who had not been himself for more than a year. That night on the bridge. The sound of loss and grief in his voice.

_Joker sent me the film… I saw him kill you._

Robin, who had always stayed at arm’s length, who would lash out if you got too close. Jason Todd, the pain-in-the-ass, escape-Houdini street rat who did not seem to trust anyone or anything in this world.

_Don’t you dare lie to me! How long did you wait before replacing me? A month? A week? I trusted you… And you just left me to die!_

As the two of them had circled and stalked and hunted each other through the abandoned mall, the puzzle took shape in Jim’s head. This was not some hardened, military-trained psychopath trying to take over the city for glory, profit or any other typical, super-villain reason. This was a sixteen-year-old kid, trained to be one of the potentially deadliest people on the planet, who had channeled all his pain and rage into a devastating attempt to kill the man he thought responsible for his suffering. Joker had taken a volatile kid and he had turned him into a ticking bomb and Jim knew what Batman’s usual response to that would be. He would hit not quite as hard, break not quite as many bones, but in the end, he would still secure the perpetrator before moving on.

Except this time, he hadn’t. While the Knight, Jason, had pointed a gun at his head, all Batman had done was apologize and reach out his hand. When the gun had fallen, all he had done was to turn his back, what for Jim had not known and had not cared. What had mattered was that the Knight had escaped and Batman had let him. This time, the bad guy had escaped and Batman had let him. Because the bad guy was Jason Todd, and Jason Todd, for better or for worse, was Bruce Wayne’s son.

_We’re the same Bruce. We’d do anything for our family._

At the end of the night, everybody had. Jim had shot the man he had come to call his crime-fighting partner and even his weirdest friend and ally, for his daughter. Barbara had gotten straight back to work and she had stayed in the fight, for her boyfriend and her father. Robin, Tim Drake, had taken a bullet without so much as a single scream to aid his mentor and father. And Jason... the Knight... despite everything that had happened, he had returned and he had saved their lives. Jim’s. Tim’s. Bruce’s. What for was anybody’s guess, but Jim Gordon had seen enough misguided revenge plots in his life to know that awakenings were always rude and guilt was a pain that never died. And with a man as emotionally short-handed as Batman for a father figure and a psychopath as cruel as the Joker for a kidnapper, Jim Gordon was sure that healthy coping mechanisms were not in his bag of tricks, much unlike disappearing into thin air. The apple truly did not fall very far from the tree.

The phone felt cold and heavy in his hand, but Jim chalked that up to fatigue and exhaustion from the night’s events. After two rings, his daughter’s voice answered, clearly tense from juggling whatever chaos had erupted after Batman’s unmasking. Guilt stabbed him sharp into the gut. It should be him dealing with this mess. “Hey princess.”

 “Dad! Where are you? Are you okay? Is Robin with you?”

Jim couldn’t help smiling at that. That was his little girl, alright. Always putting other people first. “I’m fine, Barbara. I’m at St. Roch’s. Robin’s in surgery. Docs say he’ll make it, so don’t worry.” He waited for a moment to let that news sink in. Only when he heard her relieved sigh on the other end of the line and he was sure that there was no one within earshot did Jim speak again. “So don’t worry. You’ll get your boyfriend back alive and in one piece.”

“Cat’s pretty much out of the bag, isn’t it?”

If she was even the slightest bit surprised, his little girl didn’t show it. Then again, who was he kidding? She had stopped being his little girl a long time ago. Batgirl had been around for six years, starting when Barbara had been only fifteen. She had probably seen more horrible things and dealt with more unexpected, horrifying turns of events than he had ever wanted her to experience. He had tried so hard to shield her from all this violence, this misery. From Gotham. He had been so busy trying to protect her he had never even noticed that she was strong enough to hold her own, to protect herself, even after the Joker and that horrible night in December. He owed her a lot of credit, not just for the many criminals she had arrested during her time as Batgirl.

His thoughts returned to Batman, to Bruce, who had sounded so strangely proud when he had told Jim that Barbara was stronger than he thought. Who would know better? She had worked with him for years. Judging from all the computers in that Clock Tower, she had been working with him even after the Joker, ever since. And in between that and dating two of his sons, Bruce probably thought of her as part of the family. In hindsight, that’s what they had been. The bats and the birds. Family, if not by blood, then in spirit. Batgirl had been Batman’s daughter just as much as Barbara had been his. And Robin—

“So... I’m guessing this is the part where you tell me off for working with Bruce...”

“No. I am proud of you, Barbara.” He really was. Of course he had been furious at first, but what point was there crying over spilled milk? Barbara had made her choices a long time ago and it didn’t seem like she regretted any of them. While _he_ had been worried about her safety, _she_ had been fighting crime and surviving a paralyzing shot to the spine, all the while being a grade A student, earning two postgraduate degrees and having a healthy social life. How many people could say that of themselves? How many men could count themselves lucky enough to say that of their daughters? “I love you and I am very proud of you, Barbara.”

“Uhm... okay...”

His daughter clearly wasn’t convinced. _Stubborn and skeptical, just like her old man._ The apple really did not fall far from the damn tree. He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and turned just in time to see the nurses roll the stretcher down the hallway. Tim Drake’s face looked pale against the cowl, but at least there _was_ a cowl. Jim was immensely grateful that everyone, including the nurses and doctors that had treated him, had instantly agreed that one unmasked protector was bad enough, thank you very much. He was grateful that Robin was still just that, Robin, to the rest of the world. That Batgirl was still Batgirl. Nightwing was still Nightwing. That all of them were still alive. Strangely enough, for a night that had started so miserably and then taken a nose-dive into a basement of nightmares, there were a lot of things he was thankful for.

“Listen, Robin just got out of surgery. I’ll stay here and keep him company until he comes around. Tell Cash I’ll get back to the precinct later.”

“Tell him yourself,” Barbara answered over a slight chuckle. “Looks like he wants to talk to you.”

He could hear the footsteps in the background, heavy boots on hard floors. The pace was definitely Aaron’s. His deep voice came through the speakers soon enough. “Jim! Great to hear from you. You and Robin okay?”

“Yes, we’ll both be fine. We’re at St. Roch’s.” The headache behind his temple returned with a vengeance. It had been a long night and he knew where this was going. The sooner they got it over with, the better. “I take it Scarecrow’s all locked up?”

“Together with the other nut jobs. Batman dropped him off a minute ago, said he was gonna go clean up the rest. Now we’re only missing two: Deathstroke and the Arkham Knight.”

 _Deathstroke and the Arkham Knight..._ His thoughts returned to Killinger’s, to a young man with too many scars, too much pent-up pain and anger, and to the uncharacteristically emotional Batman who had reached out his hand rather than knock him out and throw him in jail. Jim couldn’t blame him. He had spent the better part of the last three years blaming himself for his daughter getting shot and paralyzed from the waist down, but in hindsight... as horrifying as that had been and as much as it occasionally still loomed over their family like a black thunder cloud, it had been one night. One night, followed immediately by excellent professional treatment, physically and emotionally, by support from everyone Barb had ever called a friend or family. Even so, there had been nights when Jim had been sick with guilt, lying in the darkness of his lonesome bedroom, wondering what kind of justice there was in a world where a father could stand tall while his daughter was crippled for life. He had failed her and that pain would never go away.

If he was feeling that awful about it, what must have gone through Bruce’s head in that year between Robin, Jason, disappearing and that invitation landing at the GCPD? What must he have felt like for the last three years, believing one of his sons to be dead – tortured and murdered by that deranged clown? What must it have been like, finding out that he was still alive, that he had believed he had been forgotten and abandoned, left for dead in the hands of that monster? What would something like that even do to a person? He tried to imagine what it would have been like if their places had been swapped, if it had been Barbara instead of Jason, himself instead of Bruce, and immediately felt sick to his stomach.

“Jim, are you still there?”

“Yes, yes, just tired.” He didn’t even have to fake it. The yawn came automatically and his voice was already shot. He _was_ tired. Still, that wasn’t the reason why he had missed whatever Aaron had been trying to tell him. “Come again?”

“I was just wondering...” Cash didn’t seem to have noticed the half-lie. Another thing to be grateful for. “We know Deathstroke took over the militia and he’ll probably show up once Batman finished dismantling what’s left of it, but no one’s seen or heard anything of the Arkham Knight since the Cloudburst went off. You wouldn’t happen to have learned anything while Scarecrow had you?”

“Sorry, but I don’t have a damn clue where he is.”

Technically, it wasn’t a lie. He did not know where the Arkham Knight was. He had vanished into thin air after saving their asses at the Asylum, as everyone in the batfamily was so wont to do. He knew his name was Jason, presumably killed by the Joker, but that was all hearsay. Wouldn’t even be admissible in court. Technically, he had no hard evidence proving the Arkham Knight’s identity. Technically, he also still owed Bruce Wayne and Batman a debt of gratitude for all the good he had done for this city, for Barbara.

Practically, he knew the only person who’d ever be able to catch him was Batman, so unless _Bruce_ was willing to chase after his own son and lock him up in jail, Jim was not going to waste money and manpower on a wild goose chase. Not to mention, if he was being honest with himself, if this had been Barbara instead of Jason, he wouldn’t have arrested her either, and he would most likely have fought anyone who’d try to do it in his stead. Going after the Knight might have been the just thing to do, but it certainly didn’t feel right.

Practically, even if the Knight were to get caught, he’d be out within a month. Batman-trained escape-Houdini and all that. Not to mention this boy had managed to build a militia out of nowhere.

Practically, he wasn’t letting a criminal get away. He was saving this beaten city a shitload of money.

Denial really isn’t just a river in Egypt.


End file.
